JxHQ: Glimpses
by princessebee
Summary: A series of drabbles, no more than 1000 words each, looking into the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn.
1. Sometimes

**Sometimes**

Sometimes she believes that life is good and when she does, she can almost believe it.

And there's a feeling inside that says this is normal and this is life and life is what happens to you when you are waking.

When you are dreaming.

And that's okay.

.

It's what she always wanted, after all. More than anything else.

She knew that if you only believed in what you wanted it would come true. Her father used to say that.

And now that she has all that she wanted it's easy to forget the times her father lied. About the Olympics. About the ballet. About the adoration and the acclaim and about everything else.

She's here now. She's made it.

.

Potential was the word she felt blistered on her flesh. _You've got the right potential, Harleen, _they all used to say to her whilst smiling and saying nothing at all_, just work a little harder and you'll make it. You'll make it._

But she never did.

And eventually she came to realise making it wasn't for her.

.

.

Nights she felt empty, nights she felt dreamless she held him and cried but he never held her back.

Which was as well because after all they were never have supposed to have been together

.

After all.

.

.

And had they ever been?

Somedays it all seemed impossible to her as though she were recalling a dream from which she'd not long awoken.

Recollection would glimmer and fade, softly draining her. By the end of the day she'd be warm and tired.

Her therapist said, and they all said, they all said she only loved him because he was an escape from her own crushing mediocrity.

But through him she could be great.

And she was great, through him.

.

.

But then they'd separated them and it was her and it was him and she was nothing, she was nothing and that's all she'd ever wanted.

Wasn't it?

She felt sure. She felt sure now that's all she ever wanted.

.

.

And he'd touched her sometimes. Sometimes, with his hands. Sometimes with his mouth. Sometimes he'd touched her. Sometimes she'd cried. Sometimes she'd laughed.

And sometimes she felt that she would crumble and disintegrate beneath the weight of what she was feeling. And all feeling was him.

And it wasn't until much later she realised.

.

.

.

Realised she'd been dying and all that time she'd never known.

.

.

.

.

--

I'd love to hear what this one meant to you, or what you think it's about.


	2. Refracting

**Refracting**

Arkham was a silent movie; flickering black and white in halting frames.

Greys and rinsed blues in unending dingy tides, unrolling before her eyes as she was led through dreary corridors to her cell. Uniforms blending into walls blending into glass blending into bed linen, so much of it so alike she would stumble, unable to tell where corners turned, where walls began and people ended, lost in the monotony.

She watches from eyes glazed empty as the day shuffle-marches past, the reel winding steadily on in dogged routine determined to numb her into compliance.

When she shuts her eyes it's like a flashbulb, exploding white and blinding her before fading into brilliant technicolour.

_Purple gloves sliding against bruised skin, mottled and tender._

She opens them and Arkham has stalled, as though the frame has skipped on its own banality. She blinks, the shimmer of glass making the world beyond seem to hover as though struggling to shift forward. Abruptly, it grinds into motion again as a silver-grey trolley is wheeled slowly past, pushed by celluloid white hands.

Another flash, the light golden and warm behind her eyes.

_Slippery green hair coiling over hungry fingers, greedily entwining and gripping tight._

When she opens her eyes again, the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and stand on end, as though she has brought with her the frenetic motion of her dreams. She shivers, and her grey and blue cell shimmers.

_Cheeks pinched shiny pink and red lips staining swollen eyelids._

Her skin tingles and throbs and she hears herself make a soft noise as her eyelids flicker open. When she looks down at her hands, they are peachy against the drab sheets and she moistens her mouth and tastes greasepaint.

_Skin hard and white as marble unyielding against black and red breasts, yellow hair brushing across soda-orange satin, snarling in gold buttons._

Her scalp prickles and her breath hitches. Arkham was blurring and running together, a landscape of ash and dishwater. She shut her eyes and kept them closed.

_Electric blue silk bunched then stretched, rubbing cream skin raw, welts licked wet-red by a pink tongue. _

_The burn of liquid black eyeliner in powder blue eyes smarting red, black lipstick smearing grey on white skin, purple eyes glittering hard as stones, stinging on impact when they stared at her. The flash of a smile, razor-bright, a dirty rainbow on her skin in murky blues and blackened purples, yellows that are striated with grey and swollen pinks that gleam angrily._

_Golden curls smoothed calm beneath cruel caressing hands, kisses bitten into cushiony flesh and the heat of a heartbeat beneath her palm; then the whole of her folded into lean muscle and purple worsted wool, fused to a beast from whom the soundtrack to this splendour emits. pealing laughter crazed and delighted, drenching her world in twinkling prisms, ricocheting upwards and ringing out in a brilliant arcing accompaniment._

When she opens her eyes, the laughter does not stop, bur rises in cresting waves that echo down the corridors and rattle the glass. Arkham shudders against its force, splintering and cracking to reveal brilliant veins of colour like hidden jewels as the continuance is upset, sudden variety in the motion and passing of guards and nurses.

She smiles.


	3. Sacrament

**Sacrament**

The back of his hand is what God would feel like if she could stretch up high enough to touch Heaven.

It's awful and wonderful at once. It hurts, but in that pain there is glory; a splendour that dazzles and elevates her into rapture.

She yearns for it. She cannot refuse it, any more than a mystic could turn away from a holy vision.

To the divine visitation of his hands she is martyr and in that duty she is delirious. She offers herself willingly as the sacrifice and knows elation.

She makes of herself the most precious gift to demonstrate the power of her love.

He is as terrible and beautiful as the sky in all its shifting glory and beneath him she basks no matter his cast.

She is the chosen one and all else pales.

When he turns from her, the world is plunged into darkness as though all illumination radiated from his being.

She is left with an emptiness so profound that it is worse than pain.

She has known what it is like to be immersed in glory and now to be without it leaves her shivering and in anguish, staggering in bitter exile.

Despair blots her soul; it reverberates against its screams to feel his touch just once more. It shudders against the echo of her loss.

Untouched, her torment is boundless.

This is how she knows Hell must truly be ice.

_--_

_My deep thanks to the marvellous pressure_hinges on livejournal who provided the first line of this ficlet, from which sprang the rest. _


	4. Canvas

**CANVAS**

Her body is his canvas.

He is an artist after all. Bruises are the colours that skin makes when the blood seeps past the broken vessels. Cuts the separation of flesh, allowing new hues to well up, painting his message on her body, marked there for anyone to see.

The sunset he paints across her skin never lasts; but must be constantly reapplied just as the day dies and dies again. It creeps slowly, moving through its spectrum in the same exquisite order; from angry red to blue that mourns into purple then black, like death, before swimming into green speckling yellow then resuming once more its peachy emptiness.

It is a marvel he must reconstruct over, for both of them to regard in silence.

What fire rises in him he must release. He enacts art upon the world, his dreams and desires, his faith and his feeling. He shares his vision and conviction in this way, striving as any artist will to make the world see as he does, to understand what he believes. The undying compulsion to peel back the pearly membrane that conceals the rot beneath. The grand joke.

But upon her body he unleashes a reflection of the darkness that underscores his work, obscured far below the malicious and remorseless joy that is his inspiration.

Upon her body he can release his hidden self, and be freed.

She receives it and absorbs it quietly, gratefully. Of course she must, because without colour the canvas is empty. Without the stain of his emotion she is blank and can merely wait to be filled.

Beneath his hands, she becomes something else and is glad. From his hands can flow upon her unresisting body all of his anger and his frustration, his pain and his cruelty. In this way she is made important and she knows this; she proudly displays herself as his masterpiece.

He chose her for this purpose and she revels in that knowledge. In her selection he has made her immortal, though the process of creation may one day destroy her.

He created her in his image and in giving her torment he makes her the more perfect a reflection. And mirrored, hers is vivid and alarming whilst his remains concealed and safe.

He strives to create beauty in his way, as any artist seeks to do. In his eyes his deeds are splendid and a gift to a world which resists, unwilling to see the beauty in its truth.

But he can make Harley love the pain he gives her for being chosen to portray it. She becomes truth and that is beautiful. In this way he transcends. He is Creator.

_--_

_This story was deeply assisted by the wonderful pressure_hinges on livejournal who contributed some amazing ideas! I'm eternally grateful!_


	5. Present

**Present**

It was a type of a game, the Joker supposed. Or at least, they'd turned it into one.

It was a part of the entire delicious process, one more little element that made up the whole of a caper. An indication that things were really rolling now and soon all his carefully laid plans would unfold. One more touch to heighten his anticipation for the main event.

She'd present to him with a bright and eager smile, standing up straight with hands behind her back, chin up and breasts thrust out and submit to his assessment with barely restrained excitement, the liliripes of her cowl quivering slightly.

He'd walk around her in a slow circle, critical eyes carefully surveying her from head to toe, lips twisted into a concentrated grimace. One step at a time, pausing to examine every inch, every seam, every fold of fabric.

He'd step in close to her and inspect the white of her collar and cuffs while she shut her eyes and waited with a rapturous expression, searching intently for the merest speck of grime or the tiniest smudge. He'd lean back and frown at the seams of her red and black panels, ensuring they were tightly woven, that the diamonds that patterned her legs and arms were flat and smooth and precisely arranged. He'd examine the white greasepaint she slathered across her face minutely, ensuring it was as perfectly even and absolute as his own complexion; that her lips were the exact blend of red and black and her mask was adhered absolutely to her flesh, as though it had been painted there.

They had begun this little game once upon a time, he couldn't quite recall exactly, when they'd been on their way to a caper he was particularly excited about. She was driving the car, her liliripes bobbing in the wind and beaming to hear him laugh. She'd reached forward to change gears and that's when he'd seen it. A stain that spread across the back of her hand, slightly darker than the china red spandex it marred. A blot. An imperfection on his masterpiece, smeared there as rudely as if some hack had smudged the face of the Mona Lisa.

He'd growled at her to stop the car and she'd glanced at him in terror, his sudden and quiet fury a mystery to her and all the more frightening because of it.

A backhand, and then he'd shoved her out onto the street, leaving her staring woefully after him as he'd pealed off, muttering furiously to himself.

She did not connect that incident with his subsequent careful scrutiny of her appearance before every venture, but she did not care. He knew she was simply delighted to be subjected to his examination and strove hard to meet his exacting standards. For the moments it took him to survey her every inch, his attention was absolutely upon her and to that she could never protest, not even when he grabbed her head to scream about errant strands of hair poking out the sides of her cowl or shook her violently to protest against a tiny hole where red became black. It took only one or two oversights, early on, and she learned to rise to his expectations and indeed, the pride she took in doing so gratified him, watching as she swelled below his gaze, bottom and breasts thrust out, chin up, spine curved and tummy sucked in, certain she had attained perfection but all too eager to strive harder if she had not.

All she had needed to know were what the demands were and then she bent herself delightedly to fulfilling them.

Every time she dons that checkerboard of black and red, she announces to the world who she belongs to. The sight of it is inextricably linked to him and as a living creation she is a powerful message of his skills and vision. No matter where she is - or who she is with - that costume brands her as his, always.

How she wears it reflects upon him and he demands no less of her than he does of himself.

For so long as she wears it, she is bound to him and he knows she comprehends this and that is why, even when he's left her or she's left him, she never seeks to forge a new identity, to rise anew from the red and black ashes of her bells and motley. It is always to that guise she returns and so long as that is she remains his property, communicating so exquisitely her desire to be so.

Clad in that costume, she is Harley Quinn but she is never just that.

She's _His_ Harley Quinn.

--

_Sorry, everyone, for the big delay in releasing new material. I thought you probably all needed a break anyway. I have written YET ANOTHER smut piece as well. Go to my profile and look for the link to my profile at the JokerxHarley fanfiction archive. The story is called 'Two Bits' and is both fun and scary (and sexy!). I completed NaNoWriMo successfully but haven't written a word since. I needed a break too! I should be getting stuck back into things. _


	6. Branded

**Branded**

Each and every single mark had its story. Each scar its litany of woe, or its psalm of love.

When the plexiglass and cement walls of her cell seemed to shrink in around her, or when Ivy was occupied tending to her plants and had no attention to spare for a fleshly thing, or even when the hours since she had last seen him had begun to drag, she began to pour over them, as though reading a story on her body. Tracing her fingertips over ridges and shiny flesh, dreamily recalling to mind each moment it was seared upon her permanently, branding her forever more.

Each and every single mark would spark its special memory, transporting her absolutely.

She would shut her eyes and gasp in, the recirculated air of her cell or the earthy freshness of Ivy's greenhouse becoming pungent with the scent of candlewax and acid and sweat, the pomade of his hair and the sweetness of candyfloss. She would gaze open flesh raised and twisted, rice paper thin and smooth, white and pink and red, glistening wetly and remember moments in which he laughed or screamed, the frightening flash of wild eyes, the snap of white teeth.

Each and every single mark elicited its particular emotion, conjuring up vivid sensation that made her head spin.

Wet passion, heavy breath steaming her face, her body entwined with his, her back arching as she opened to him. Or terror, cowering away from clawed hands and fury that seemed to swell him into a monster, quaking into a shrunken ball. Even anger, at times. Anger of her own that was hot as blood when she fought back. Then relief, feeling herself ooze against him, pouring out whatever conflict she'd trapped.

Love, of course, more than anything else, always love, the constant accompaniment to whatever melody of feeling she was immersed in. Love, strong and hard and ferocious, tender and sweet and warm. Love that could make her feel like she was teetering on the edge, that made her feel as though she conquered the world with the force of it. Love that could make her feel eternal, and fragile as spun glass.

Each and every single mark was the story of that love and she bore them proudly to tell it to the world.


	7. Saviour

**Saviour**

The terrible thing, she'd always thought, were that there were so many _rules_.

Rules about how to speak and how to behave. Rules about what to wear and when. Rules about what to do in a certain situation, all different rules for what to do in another.

And those were just the obvious ones.

There were also rules about what was acceptable and what was not. What sort of background you should have. Who your friends were. Where you lived.

Who you knew. Who knew you.

Rules, endless rules. And life was governed by them absolutely.

If you could follow these rules – follow them all, exactly the way you were supposed to, then you could fit in somewhere. Find a niche. Have a little space in the big wide world to call your own.

Best of all, on every side, you'd be surrounded. Never really alone.

She was a gymnast, and that put her on the cheerleading team of her working class public shool. That made her popular.

In college, she was blonde and pretty and fun and joined the drama club as well as the cheerleading team. So she was popular there too.

She was glad. Being popular meant there were always people around. People to talk to you and walk beside you, to nudge you in class and come see your shows, people to study with you and drag you out to the bar, and laugh when you stacked it.

People to believe in you.

At home there was never anyone around, even when there was. At home, she hid in her bedroom to hide from the emptiness of that house.

At home, when she was alone in her bedroom with the door shut tight, she practiced so hard to learn the rules by heart.

She was constantly terrified of discovery, certain one day someone would look at her and say: _you are not one of us. You do not really belong here. _

Somehow she'd always known she didn't really belong anywhere. It wasn't simply that she wasn't truly part of the in-crowd, being working class and Jewish and an orphan. Despite the issue of her birth, they had just been the easiest to assimilate to.

No one ever knew how hard she worked at it, how much she had to put into it to fool them all. To never arouse their suspicion. And though she could tell her friends about her first kiss and her first heartbreak, she knew she could never tell them she was an Imposter.

Such honesty could lead to only to rejection. Exile. Solitude.

Loneliness.

Her identity was something she obscured in order to know community. She learned quickly the most palatable and personable aspects of herself and crafted them carefully into what they expected of her. Bubbly but not as effusive as she longed for. Talented but not as exceptional as she wanted. Wild but never as unrestrained as she yearned to be.

Holding the heart of herself, fluttering and thudding, a prisoner buried in the darkest recesses of her being. Cannibalising herself to survive.

Somehow she hadn't thought it would last. Somehow, she'd been led to believe there would come a time when that aching slow devouring would come to an end and she would joyously regenerate, emerge then her fullest self and finally whole.

But in adulthood there were more rules, yet more to add to the never ending pile, seeming to heap down upon her in quantities so vast she felt smothered; every inch of her crammed full of details to remember. Rules about rent, about debts, about bills, rules about work and travelling and keeping it together.

Sometimes she thought she'd go mad beneath the mass of all those rules. But then she remembered that the mad were just those who broke the rules and terror would constrict her throat and her true self would be the flutter of a bird's wing somewhere deep in her chest. A single flutter, and then stillness, the clawing need for survival stronger after all.

Until him.

He walked a solitary path and yet he never seemed alone. He was glorious and respected and never feared anything, least of all discovery.

He was mad and had no more rules left to break.

It made her quake to think of it, made her gaze upon him with wide and disbelieving eyes, wondering how he'd ever found the courage to do it.

She knew she certainly never could.

It was just as well, in the end, because being by his side was better than going it alone.

Under his guidance, beneath his hand and the glow of his smile, she released herself and her liberation was like death in how absolutely it obliterated all she had ever known.

But in that destruction she was split open and stepped forth from her ruins, reborn and brilliant.

He pushed her into madness and the pressure of his encouragement as she fell was all the support she had ever wanted. Now fully she became herself as she had always been within her head, the person she had dreamed she could be, had wished she could be, had wanted to fight to be. She was as bright and as bouncy, as careless and as carefree and finally as passionate and perverse as confinement had made of her restrained soul, now bursting with the excess of freedom.

He encouraged it. He delighted in it. When all others around her despaired, his laughter was her driving force, his approval her only barometer, his pride the only bastion worth striving for. She gloried in it and gave herself over completely and in doing so found herself increasing in realisation, becoming more even than she had dared to believe.

The petty drudgery of normality, of day-to-day-to-day, of following the rules and _fitting in_ fell from her like a shell and she was spun instead into the realm of the truly elite. In all the world she was unique and even her madness defied normal classification. For her, they had to create new definitions and new words and she was on the front page of countless papers, had photos taken and documentaries made of her. And all the while he was beside her, holding her up next to him and she knew he was her deliverer.

She no longer had to fight for a space in the world to call her own. She no longer had to wonder if she could truly lay claim to what she had, or that she'd be discovered as an imposter.

He made room for her. Within his own generously carved out space in a crammed-full world, he gave her a spot and she knew she would never have to be anything again but what he told her, and that what he told her would be what she wanted anyway.

Within that niche she could stop fighting, could stop battling the overwhelming crush on all sides that was the unbearable struggle of all other searching creatures and simply float, at peace and fulfilled, within the world he had created.

Manifested by him, she was free of trying to be anything else and as his creation she was finally actualised.

Beside him, with him, for him, she was never alone, not even when they were apart. The wretched, aching emptiness she had felt hiding in her bedroom, alone in her dorm, waiting for the next time she saw her friends and then even when she was in the midst of them, was finally filled and she knew she would never truly be lonely again. So long as he was there and she knew he was there.

To him she belonged and in that belonging she knew herself.

He knew her. And through that, so did everyone else.

There were rules. Rules about how to behave and how to dress, rules about what to do in one circumstance and rules about what to do in another. Rules about how to treat him and when to touch him, when to act in his name and when to stay simply silent.

They governed life completely, but she never had to learn them. She knew them like she finally knew her heart.

After all, they were his rules.

And in that, they didn't feel like rules at all.

–

_Hey everyone! I've got myself into a bit of a rut. It's been so long since I really sat down and wrote anything that even though I've got dozens of ideas, it's a really daunting task to try and get started again. I don't want to let anyone down either._

_Anyway, I'd love some encouragement and nudging, so if you would like to come over to my eljay at clownyprincess .livejournal. com (remove the spaces) and let me know what you'd really like to read – boy, would I ever appreciate it!_


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